


Puzzle Pieces

by ChokolatteJedi



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-15
Updated: 2013-08-15
Packaged: 2017-12-23 16:13:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/928521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChokolatteJedi/pseuds/ChokolatteJedi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simon contemplates River</p>
            </blockquote>





	Puzzle Pieces

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ViaLethe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViaLethe/gifts).



> Thanks to my beta, Howl!

Mal contemplated River.

Of course, some days he felt like he had done nothing _but_ contemplate River ever since she was smuggled aboard his ship. The girl was like a puzzle that had been broken down and some of the pieces replaced with ones from other puzzles. Ones that maybe didn't quite fit as well as the old pieces. And some might still be missing.

Some moments, she was a normal young girl. She would gossip and play games with Kaylee, and cause him to yell at him in his best imitation of his mother, chastising all the farm-hands back home. She would sit still, smiling, while Kaylee brushed and braided her hair. Or she would play cards with Simon and the Preacher - Jayne always declined if she was playing - and beat the pants off of all of them.

Then there were the moments when she flew his ship. Somehow more mature than Wash had been - the man was brilliant, but he had played with plastic dinosaurs on duty! She was all business, manipulating the levers the exact amount that they needed to move, pressing buttons precisely, and delivering exact calculations of their ETA, down to the minute.

Rare moments, she was a trained killer, mowing down everything in her path with deadly accuracy. More and more often she was quiet, almost poetic. Mal had been perturbed the first time that she had said something flowery to him - used to her yelling and non sequitors - but not just because it was a new puzzle piece. But because there was a piece of him that understood her words - a piece he had long thought dead. And some moments still, she woke up screaming about Reavers, and memories that weren't hers.

If Mal were being honest with himself - and there was no better time for it - that was when he first began to see her improving. Before, the pieces of River were all jumbled together, and she would shift from one to another within seconds. After Miranda, she had become a little more defined, sometimes remaining the same character for an hour or more.

Mal wondered if he would always classify his life by places, by battles. Before Serenity. After Serenity. Before Miranda. After Miranda.

If there was one thing that Serenity had taught him - and it had taught him plenty - it was that a human was never just one thing. Sometimes the pieces fit together a little better than someone else's, but no one person was a complete whole. If he was a whole, he couldn't have been broken at Serenity. Or maybe he couldn't have emerged from it alive. One of the two; depending on the day he wasn't always sure which. But the point was, a man saw something like that, and certain pieces just burnt away. He could only survive if there were other pieces left to hold together.

That Operative hadn't had any other pieces. He'd burned them all away long ago, Mal figured. He had his own Serenity moment below Mr. Universe's generators, bound to a pipe with his own sword. And with that, the last pieces he had were demolished. It was a shadow of a man who bid Mal farewell that day, and River knew it too.

River wasn't River anymore either, the way Mal figured it. At least, not the way Simon remembered. If Mal cared to make contact with anyone he had known before Serenity, he suspected that they would say the same about him. He watched her though, when she was around Simon. She tried her best to be that girl he remembered, piecing as many parts of the puzzle together as she could. And Simon saw what was missing, and fought to find it, but he never noticed what she still had. Mal wasn't sure where the one ended and the other began, but he knew that the boundary was there.

In some ways, that boundary made her more real to him than anyone else he had ever met. She was the only person he had ever met who was as broken, if not more broken than himself. Zoe, he always suspected, had bent rather than broken in Serenity. Simon had given up everything for his sister, but he still hadn't really _changed_ that much. But River, she had been broken, and she had pulled herself back together. Her edges were more jagged than Mal's, but it was still something that they shared.

But that boundary made her real. Made her a person in her own right, broken and reconstructed. Metal reforged was twice as hard to break. Mal was never going to let himself break again, and he suspected that River felt the same way.

Maybe that was why she understood him better than anyone else he had ever met. Even Zoe, who nine times out of ten would just go along with his plans with the intention of bailing him out when he got stuck. River _believed_ in his plans. River he never had to explain anything to. River he never had to hide his true self from.

He near killed a man with Miranda. He would have if it wasn't a crueler death to show the Operative the error of his ways instead. Mal had killed men before: before Serenity, After Serenity, Before Miranda, and he was sure After Miranda. Once upon a time maybe he had felt guilt, but that was at least three before and afters ago. Mal wasn't proud of his feelings towards the Operative. More, he wasn't sure if he was guilty about wanting to kill him, or guilty about not actually doing it.

And River didn't care. Instead, she smiled at him one night and said, "death can be a mercy, but some people don't deserve that mercy. Guilt has no place in justice." He had stared at her for many long moments, just the two of them in the cockpit while the rest slept.

And she had smiled back that knowing smile of hers, and added, "he has a better life now, whether he knows it or not."

Mal wasn't particularly sure that was true, but he accepted it for the moment.

She'd near been telling the truth with the other one - Early. In some ways, she was the ship. His ship. He'd always felt a kinship with _Serenity_ , since the moment he saw her. It was the first moment After Serenity that he'd felt anything but emptiness. Even Zoe's complaints hadn't convinced him that she wasn't _his_. Wasn't always _meant_ to be his.

And he'd found her a crew. Wash, who knew every move she could do, and had a better feel for every micron of her controls than anyone - even Mal. Kaylee, who thought Serenity talked to her, told her where she was hurting. And with them, Mal had gotten his baby off the ground.

But it wasn't until they'd taken on River that he felt _Serenity_ really had a soul. If anyone knew every inch of that ship - if anyone knew what _Serenity_ was really feeling - it was River. He knew the plan, and yet, just for a moment, he'd believed that she could do it, just fade away into his ship and haunt her forever.

And part of him wouldn't have minded if she did. Course, he wouldn't get to see her pretty face anymore, but just for that instant, he fell completely in love. River and _Serenity_ ; the two most important people-things-places-memories-gifts in his life. After Serenity, he had never hoped to feel again. After Miranda, he prayed that he would always feel this way.

She was his - they were his. And he was theirs. The ship weren't a ship without a Captain, and a captain weren't a captain without a Ship. They were inseparable, but not indistinguishable. No matter how many times he saw River planet-side, away from Serenity's comforting curves, he couldn't help but think how wrong she looked. She belonged on the ship. In the ship. With the ship.

Which meant that she belonged with him.

And tonight, as they sat together in the dark cockpit, alone, while everyone else slept, she had suddenly said, "Sometimes a thing looks complete, because it can't see what pieces are still missing." She hadn't looked at him, but stared strait ahead into the black. "Sometimes three separate pieces fit together to make a whole."

Mal cleared his throat, hoping that they were talking about the same thing. "Some people might think those three pieces were already whole," he offered.

River smiled enigmatically. "They'd be wrong."


End file.
